Irreverent merriment. Diabolical debauchery. Gory good times. Editor Shane McKenzie has gutted the holiday spirit and left it to bleed out on the pages of this gruesome, extreme horror tribute to special occasions. Includes stories by the following masters of the macabre: Jack Ketchum, Joe R. Lansdale, Bentley Little, Nate Southard, Lee Thomas, Wrath James White and More! Table of Contents: "Consensual" by Jack Ketchum "securedate.com" by Boyd E. Harris "Face" by Patrick Shand "Ghunt" by Lee Thomas "Joyeux Paques" by Emma Ennis "The Greatest Sin" by Kevin Wallis "The Greenhouse Garden of Suicides" by Kirk Jones "IHeartRecycling" by Lesley Conner "Taco Meat" by Jon McNee "Remember What I Said About Living Out in the Country?" by A.J. Brown "Every Day a Holiday" by Steve Lowe "Seeing Red" by Chris Lewis Carter "Southern Fried Cruelty" by Matt Kurtz "By Bizarre Hands" by Joe R. Lansdale "Family Man" by John Bruni "We Run Races With Goblin Troopers" by Lee Thompson "Pascal's Wager" by Wrath James White "A Special Surprise at Thanksgiving Dinner" by Elle Richfield "Waiting for Santa" by Bentley Little "Hung With Care" by Ty Schwamberger "Sunshine Beamed" by Marie Green "Dia de los Inocentes" by Elias Siqueiros "Three, Two, One" by Nate Southard

Amid the turmoil of modern Damascus, one teenage boy finds his political voice in a message of rebellion that echoes throughout Syria and as far away as Western Europe. Inspired by his dearest friend, old Uncle Salim, he begins a journal to record his thoughts and impressions of family, friends, life at school, and his growing feelings for his girlfriend, Nadia. Soon the hidden diary becomes more than just a way to remember his daily adventures; on its pages he explores his frustration with the government injustices he witnesses. His courage and ingenuity finally find an outlet when he and his friends begin a subversive underground newspaper. Warmed by a fine sense of humor, this novel is at once a moving love story and a passionate testimony to the difficult and committed actions being taken by young people around the world

These eleven stories, along with a masterful novella, mark the triumphant return of David Gates, whom New York magazine anointed “a true heir to both Raymond Carver and John Cheever.” A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me is populated by characters, young or old or neither, who are well educated, broadly knowledgeable, often creative and variously accomplished, whether as a doctor or a composer, an academic or a journalist. And every one of them carries a full supply of the human condition: parents in assisted-living—or assisted-dying—facilities, too many or too few people in their families and marriages, the ties that bind a sometimes messy knot, age an implacable foe, impulses pulling them away from comfort into distraction or catastrophe. Terrifyingly self-aware, they refuse to go gently—even when they’re going nowhere fast, in settings that range across the metropolitan and suburban Northeast to the countryside of upstate New York and New England. Relentlessly inventive, alternately hilarious and tragic, always moving, this book proves yet again that Gates is one of our most talented, witty and emotionally intelligent writers

A HANDFUL OF DUST is Evelyn Waugh's scathing commentary on the well-mannered death struggles of the upper classes — an irrepressibly amusing picture of society politely blowing its own brains out, with a defiant smile. It tells of Brenda, Tony and their friends — a wonderfully congenial group who live by a unique set of social standards. According to their rules, any sin is acceptable provided it is carried off in good taste

The bizarre set of circumstances surrounding the case of “the handy death” presents attorney Hank Ross with the nearly impossible job of defending a man who is to all appearances guilty. Billy Dupaul, one-time bonus baby for the New York Mets, is serving time in Attica State Prison for shooting a man. Eight years after the incident, the victim of the assault dies and Dupaul is faced with a trial for first-degree murder. What makes Ross’s task even more difficult is the fact that Dupaul is implicated in a prison riot organized to cover up an attempted escape. Ross must prove that Billy was the victim of a carefully planned and executed setup; he must locate the mysterious “lady” who Billy claims was present at the time of the shooting... and all he has to go on is an eight-year-old trail

Stylish historical fiction in the tradition of True Grit and Carter Beats the Devil, A Hanging at Cinder Bottom is an epic novel of exile and retribution, a heist tale and a love story both. The year is 1910. Halley’s Comet has just signaled the end of the world, and Jack Johnson has knocked out the “Great White Hope,” Jim Jeffries. Keystone, West Virginia, is the region’s biggest boomtown, and on a rainy Sunday morning in August, its townspeople are gathered in a red-light district known as Cinder Bottom to witness the first public hanging in over a decade. Abe Baach and Goldie Toothman are at the gallows, awaiting their execution. He’s Keystone’s most famous poker player; she’s the madam of its most infamous brothel. Abe split town seven years prior under suspicion of armed robbery and murder, and has been playing cards up and down the coast, hustling under a variety of pseudonyms, ever since. But when he returns to Keystone to reunite with Goldie and to set the past right, he finds a brother dead and his father’s saloon in shambles — and suspects the same men might be responsible for both. Only then, in facing his family’s past, does the real swindle begin. Glenn Taylor, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, has a unique voice that breathes life into history and a prose style that snaps with lyricism and comedy

John Taylor is a P.I. with a special talent for finding lost things in the dark and secret center of London known as the Nightside. He's also the reluctant owner of a very special—and dangerous—weapon. Excalibur, the legendary sword. To find out why he was chosen to wield it, John must consult the Last Defenders of Camelot, a group of knights who dwell in a place that some find more frightening than the Nightside. London Proper. It's been years since John's been back—and there are good reasons for that

Presented in My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding anthology

Tiffany Aching, a young witch-in-training, learns about magic and responsibility as she battles a disembodied monster with the assistance of the six-inch-high Wee Free Men and Mistress Weatherwax, the greatest witch in the world

This tale of an exotic adventure undertaken in the face of tragedy includes a revealing portrait of Conrad Aiken’s friend and protégé Malcolm Lowry. Blomberg has loved Noni for what seems like his whole life. He loves her like he loves the sunset, like he loves the air he breathes. But beautiful, strange, impulsive Noni — who has spent years in a passionless marriage to one of Boston’s most notorious swindlers — has only a few months to live; her heart is about to give out. Before she dies, Noni begs Blom to finance a trip to Mexico, where she can obtain a quick divorce and marry the man she loves. That man is not Blom, however, but Gil — an upstanding young gentleman who is to know nothing of Noni’s condition. With his own heart aching, Blom arranges the money, and the trio heads south on a journey that will bring them face to face with the mysteries of life and death

John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Although it’s not the first time the legendary detective has taken the law into his own hands, it might be the last. What drove a good man to cross the line? Or have times changed, and the rules with them? Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke faces Edinburgh’s most explosive case in years, as a corrupt cop goes missing after claiming to harbour secrets that could sink the city’s police force. But in this investigation, it seems all roads lead to Rebus — and Clarke’s twin loyalties to the public and the police will be tested to their limit. A reckoning is coming — and John Rebus may be hearing the call for last orders

On the night of the State of the Union address, President James Allaire expects to give the speech of his career. But no one anticipates the terrifying turn of events that forces him to quarantine everyone in the Capitol building. A terrorist group calling itself “Genesis” has unleashed WRX3883, a deadly, highly contagious virus, into the building. No one fully knows the deadly effect of the germ except for the team responsible for its development—a team headed by Allaire, himself. The only one who might be able to help is virologist Griffin Rhodes, currently in solitary confinement in a maximum security federal prison for alleged terrorist acts, including the attempted theft of WRX3883 from the lab where he worked. Rhodes has no idea why he has been arrested, but when Allaire offers to free him in exchange for his help combating the virus, he reluctantly agrees to do what he can to support the government that has imprisoned him without apparent cause. Meanwhile, every single person in line for presidential succession is trapped inside the Capitol—every person except one: the Director of Homeland Security, who is safely at home in Minnesota, having been selected as the “Designated Survivor” for this event. With enemies both named and unnamed closing in, and the security of the nation at stake, Griff must unravel the mysteries of WRX3883 without violating his pledge as a scientist to use no animal testing in his experiments… and time is running out. Tense, thrilling, and entirely plausible, A Heartbeat Away will make you reflect, wonder, and be truly afraid

"Joshua Cohen has created a visionary novel that is terrifying and heartbreaking and humbling in its luminous brilliance. In my view, it firmly places the author on the same level as Kafka." — Michael Disend, author of Stomping the Goyim "The idea that there are multiple heavens, right ones and wrong ones, white ones and black ones, is pushed to its fantastical limits by Brooklyn writer Joshua Cohen in his dream-world novel of the afterlife. . Heaven is a challenging but rewarding read on thematic and formal levels." — The Brooklyn Rail "A breathless flight of controlled delirium, an exquisitely blasphemous tour of an afterlife where earth's dominion, in all its terror and glory, trumps the miraculous and overturns the world to come. . It's a brave book that should earn its young author the reader's profound and enduring admiration." — Steve Stern, author of The Frozen Rabbi When a ten-year-old Jewish boy is exploded on a Jerusalem street by a ten-year-old Palestinian boy, he wakes up in a heaven no one in his tradition prepared him for, a heaven of others. Joshua Cohen's novel stands at the crossroads of a conflicted city and wordplay that both celebrates and dismantles tradition

A Heritage and its History tells the story of 69 year old Sir Edwin Challoner, and his extended family. Unmarried, and with no direct issue, Challoner's closest relation, and business associate, is his younger brother Hamish. When Hamish dies of a heart condition, his son Simon prepares to take over as head of the house, as everyone assumes that Sir Edwin will also die in a matter of months. However, Sir Edwin surprises everyone by announcing his marriage to Rhoda, his neighbour, also more than 40 years his junior. Following the return from their honeymoon, Rhoda succumbs to a moment of unbridled passion with Simon, her new husband's nephew. When Rhoda falls pregnant, there is no question who has fathered the child. A Heritage and its History, gets right to the heart of this family as it splits into factions, growing increasingly bitter and resentful. The reader watches on in amazement as two families become more and more entangled, and the path to the inheritance of this once great house and title becomes ever more twisted. Sooner or later, the secret must come out

A Hero of Our Time, by Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov[1] (1814-1841), 1840[2], 1841. fiction. russian novel. romanticism. Realism. Title Geroy nashego vremeni[3] in russian; this is the second edition (1841), including the author's preface. This complete HTML e-text is based on the translation from the Russian into English by Martin Parker, published by Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1947, 1951, in the public domain in the United States of America. (A translation that has also been reprinted by but not copyrighted by the Everyman Library, 1995, revised and edited by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol, ISBN 0-660-87566-3.) Illustrations are from the Moscow edition. We have extensively modified the Parker translation here, mostly by attempting to render it into modern American English and at the same time to restore what we consider the most likely original meaning. * * * Another online edition of this work can be found at the University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center . That English translation, entitled "The Heart of a Russian," by J. H. Wisdom Marr Murray, N.Y.: Knopf, 1916, has a different order to the chapters and has heavy Victorian prose and sketchy footnotes. However, the edition, by Judy Boss, Carolyn Fay, and David Seaman, does have page numbers and a few color illustrations. We did not refer to it when doing this edition. A text-only version of that translation was released in Project Gutenberg in May, 1997. For further references, please see the books by Cornwell and Nabokov[4] previously cited, as they contain notes, a map, chronologies, excerpts from critical material, and everything you need

A brilliant new translation of a perennial favorite of Russian literature The first major Russian novel, A Hero of Our Time was both lauded and reviled upon publication. Its dissipated hero, twenty-five-year-old Pechorin, is a beautiful and magnetic but nihilistic young army officer, bored by life and indifferent to his many sexual conquests. Chronicling his unforgettable adventures in the Caucasus involving brigands, smugglers, soldiers, rivals, and lovers, this classic tale of alienation influenced Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov in Lermontov’s own century, and finds its modern-day counterparts in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, the novels of Chuck Palahniuk, and the films and plays of Neil LaBute

Early works of an author who has hit the big-time are often reissued for reasons more venal than literary. None of the pre- and post- publications of Tracy Chevalier come anywhere near the standard of The Girl with the Pearl Earring, but that didn't stop them being rushed into instant print once best-sellerdom was declared and the film came out. Andrei Makine gained international recognition only when his fourth novel, Le Testament Francais, won two prestigious prizes. Famously, the refugee from the Soviet Union who wrote in French hadn't been able to get his first novel published until he pretended it was translated from "the original Russian" by the mythical "Francoise Bour". It's a cute story, but why has that one, A Hero's Daughter, suddenly come out in English 14 years after publication? Are the translator and/or publishers jumping on a bandwagon in the light of later prizes awarded to them both? At 163 elegant pages, and featuring only two central characters – that is, "without the bewildering patronymics or the excessive length" of most Russian novels (a grab on the back cover) – A Hero's Daughter lightly realises huge moments in recent Russian history. Starting with the atrocious encounters between Germany and Russia in World War II, when existence was a frozen trench and the lads are kept going with vodka and blind loyalty ("For Stalin's sake it all made sense…"), it skips over 40 pretty good years to bring the eponymous hero into the '80s, the era of Gorbachev and perestroika. Life starts changing in ways incomprehensible to an old soldier, if 53 can be called old. Ivan feels old because he is a veteran, and because, by great good luck, he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union for simply surviving the Battle of Stalingrad. The real act of heroism that he did commit, no one ever saw. But Ivan has a precious Gold Star to prove the benevolent idiocy of the authorities, and he will never sell it, not even to numb his misery with vodka after his wife dies in their backwoods village, when life holds nothing for him. Well, not nothing. Although their son died, Ivan and Tatyana had a daughter, Olya, a model child who studied hard and went away to Moscow to become a translator. By now, Western snouts are poking greedily into Russian troughs and there is plenty of work for a girl who knows a language or two. And who is prepared to go the extra mile – the businessmen staying in the huge hotels expect more than mere translation. The valuta they pay for services rendered means that Olya can shop at the Beriozki shops for luxury goods only available in Western currency. Deep down she doesn't approve of this lifestyle, although perhaps it is justified by the small-time espionage she can engage in while her drugged clients are snoring. It all makes sense for the New Russia's sake. Though it would kill her father if he were to find out. She'd drop it all anyway, the moment she found a nice boy to marry. While Olya is ambivalent about her compromises, Ivan gets some real shocks. For the first time he is no longer trotted out to speak to local schoolchildren about his role in the great battle; and in Moscow one of his old mates spills the beans on what translators really do. Ivan gets drunk and goes berserk. The damage he does in a Beriozka becomes a radio news item, and grounds for Olya's rich Russian "fiance" to give her the flick, even though she's just survived an abortion with complications. All she wants to do is to shuck off her sordid life and take her father back to the village, where she can look after them both. Unfortunately, he dies suddenly of a heart attack. Olya sleeps with a man one last time, in order to raise the money for the coffin – flogging the Gold Star doesn't do it. The stories of Ivan and Olya are truly tough, but strangely uplifting. Life in the Soviet Union was never easy, and whatever benefits rampant capitalism might be about to provide lie outside the novel's time-frame. Meanwhile, the penury, shortages and brutal hardship that drive ordinary citizens to alcoholism and prostitution are countered by some kind of irreducible humanity. Olya emerges as an innately good girl who will one day find her proper level; Ivan is moved by an untutored morality based on vague but sound instincts. Their friends are all pals to them and to each other. The human face of Soviet society may have been covered with warts, but virtue of a sort shone out of it, as it also does from this deceptively slight, excellently translated, and deeply involving first novel

"No secret stays hidden forever." A phone call from an old friend sets Dr. Giovanni Vecchio back on the path of a mystery he'd abandoned years before. He never expected a young librarian could hold the key to the search, nor could he have expected the danger she would attract. Now he and Beatrice De Novo will follow a twisted maze that leads from the archives of a university library, through the fires of Renaissance Florence, and toward a confrontation they never could have predicted. A Hidden Fire is a paranormal mystery/romance for adult readers. It is the first book in the Elemental Mysteries Series

In the hard years of the Depression, young Travis lives with his uncle and aunt. Upstairs lives the mysterious Anna. Anna says she’s going to be “changing”, and she needs Travis’s help… for purposes she won’t explain. What follows is a tale of passion, terror, and hope, opening out to a great, dark, and unsuspected universe. Nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award for Best novel in 1986

New edition of a classic adventure novel and one of the most startling, highly praised stories in English literature-a brilliant chronicle of two sensitive children's violent voyage from innocence to experience. After a terrible hurricane levels their Jamaican estate, the Bas-Thorntons decide to send their children back to the safety and comfort of England. On the way their ship is set upon by pirates, and the children are accidentally transferred to the pirate vessel. Jonsen, the well-meaning pirate captain, doesn't know how to dispose of his new cargo, while the children adjust with surprising ease to their new life. As this strange company drifts around the Caribbean, events turn more frightening and the pirates find themselves increasingly incriminated by the children's fates. The most shocking betrayal, however, will take place only after the return to civilization. The swift, almost hallucinatory action of Hughes's novel, together with its provocative insight into the psychology of children, made it a best seller when it was first published in 1929 and has since established it as a classic of twentieth-century literature — an unequaled exploration of the nature, and limits, of innocence

The proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is the greatest threat the world faces today. Far easier to make than nuclear bombs, their effects are scarcely less devastating. And many of the world’s most dangerous regimes – Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea – either possess them, or are trying to get hold of them. In the hands of terrorists, they could kill thousands, or even millions. Updated in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, this classic account of the history of chemical and biological warfare, by two of Britain’s leading journalists, spans almost a century of horror, from the mustard gas of the First World War to the germ weapons built up by Saddam Hussein

Christmas is an ancient Roman festival, not to be celebrated by decent folk in the Scottish Highlands. Police Constable Hamish Macbeth has always loved the festivities, but this year his family is vacationing in sunny Florida. He is stuck with the long, lonely Christmas shift in freezing Lochdubh. A cranky old lady kicks off the holidays by reporting her cat missing. Then the Christmas lights and tree in a nearby village disappear soon after the local council voted to allow decorations. As Hamish finds a way to bring Christmas to the Highlands and make a little girl's dreams come true, he finds – to his delight – that he has the best Christmas ever

Elaine Hawthorn is a gray American werewolf, currently out of work, and on a mission to share in a family treasure. When she arrives in Scotland, she nearly has a head-on collision with one hot, kilt-garbed Highlander, and runs him off the road. Werewolf laird Cearnach MacNeill isn't happy Elaine ruined his car, but he quickly becomes her protector after a misunderstanding lands her right in the middle of two feuding clans. Now he's out to ensure that this sexy female wolf gets her fair share of her clan's treasure. He knows he should leave well enough alone, but it's too late to leave his heart out of it

In the not-too-distant future, competing giant fast food factions rule the world. Leonard works for Neetsa Pizza, the Pythagorean pizza chain, in a lonely but highly surveilled home office, answering calls on his complaints hotline. It’s a boring job, but he likes it — there’s a set answer for every scenario, and he never has to leave the house. Except then he starts getting calls from Marco, who claims to be a thirteenth-century explorer just returned from Cathay. And what do you say to a caller like that? Plus, Neetsa Pizza doesn’t like it when you go off script. Meanwhile, Leonard’s sister keeps disappearing on secret missions with her “book club,” leaving him to take care of his nephew, which means Leonard has to go outside. And outside is where the trouble starts. A dazzling debut novel wherein medieval Kabbalists, rare book librarians, and Latter-Day Baconians skirmish for control over secret mystical knowledge, and one Neetsa Pizza employee discovers that you can’t save the world with pizza coupons

Autumn is in the air in the Blue Ridge Mountain community of Crozet, Virginia--and all the traditions of the changing seasons are under way. Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen cleans her cupboards, her husband, Fair, prepares the horses for the shorter days ahead, and the clamorous barking of beagles signals the annual rabbit chase through the central Virginia hills. But the last thing the local beaglers and their hounds expect to flush out is a dead body. Disturbingly, it's the second corpse to turn up, after that of a missing truck driver too disfigured to identify. The deaths seem unrelated--until Harry picks up a trail of clues dating back to the state's post-Revolutionary past. The echoes of the Shot Heard Round the World pale in comparison to the dangerous shootout Harry narrowly escapes unscathed. Next time, it may be the killer who gets lucky. But not if Harry's furry friends Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker can help it. Lending their sharp-nosed talents to the hunt, they'll help their mistress keep more lives from being lost--and right an injustice buried since the early days of America's independence

A tale of border warfare, military and erotic, set in the twenty-third century, where the women rule the kingdom and the men play war games. This is the fictional memoir of Wat Dryhope — edited, annotated and commented upon. History has come to an end, war is regulated as if it's all a game. But Wat, the "History Maker" himself, does not play entirely by the rules, and when a woman, Delilah Puddock, joins the fray, this 'utopian' history is further enlivened. Alasdair Gray cleverly plays with the notion and writing of history, as well as perennial modern debates on war, sexism and society — entertaining and thought-provoking, this is a delightful satire illustrated throughout by the author

The major work of fiction in this collection, ‘A History of Books’, explores the relationship between reading and writing in twenty nine sections, each of which begins with the memory of a book that has left an image in the writer’s mind. The memory of the books themselves might have faded, but the images remain in their clarity and import — scenes of discord and madness, a stern-faced man, a young woman on a swing, a glass of beer and rays of sunlight, mountain and woodland and horizon — images which together embody the anxieties and aspirations of a writing life, and its indebtedness to what has been written and read. ‘A History of Books’ is accompanied by three shorter works, ‘As It Were a Letter’, ‘The Boy’s Name was David’ and ‘Last Letter to a Niece’, in which a writer searches for an ideal world, an ideal sentence, and an ideal reader

A major new novel from the writer Roberto Bolaño called “one of the best living Latin American writers.” Alan Pauls, one of Latin American literature’s rising stars, combines the intimate and the political in a novel that, although it is set in Argentina in the 1970s and ’80s, will bring to mind books like Choire Sicha’s Very Recent History and Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask in its subtle, brilliant depiction of the place of money in its protagonists’ lives. It begins with a body: a top executive of an iron and steel company dies after his helicopter, traveling toward the factory where he is due to meet with striking workers, plummets into the river. The briefcase full of money which he was carrying disappears without a trace. Accident, or assassination? And where is the money? A History of Money revolves around this event, as does the imagination and memory of the unnamed protagonist of the novel, who returns over and over to it even as he reflects on the role of money in his family and his own life. His parents are divorced: his father is a gambler who plays in all-night poker games and carries around all of his money in a wad of cash; his mother is a socialite who squanders her inherited fortune on a lavish lifestyle. Our protagonist, for his part, pays — in every sense of the word. And his individual story is echoed in the larger story of Argentina in the 1970s and ’80s, where money is everything: promise and punishment, dream and disaster. An intensely evocative novel from one of the world’s most exciting new writers

“[The Book of] Revelation has served as a “language arsenal” in a great many of the social, cultural, and political conflicts in Western history. Again and again, Revelation has stirred some dangerous men and women to act out their own private apocalypses. Above all, the moral calculus of Revelation—the demonization of one’s enemies, the sanctification of revenge taking, and the notion that history must end in catastrophe—can be detected in some of the worst atrocities and excesses of every age, including our own. For all of these reasons, the rest of us ignore the book of Revelation only at our impoverishment and, more to the point, at our own peril.” The mysterious author of the Book of Revelation (or the Apocalypse, as the last book of the New Testament is also known) never considered that his sermon on the impending end times would last beyond his own life. In fact, he predicted that the destruction of the earth would be witnessed by his contemporaries. Yet Revelation not only outlived its creator; this vivid and violent revenge fantasy has played a significant role in the march of Western civilization. Ever since Revelation was first preached as the revealed word of Jesus Christ, it has haunted and inspired hearers and readers alike. The mark of the beast, the Antichrist, 666, the Whore of Babylon, Armageddon, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are just a few of the images, phrases, and codes that have burned their way into the fabric of our culture. The questions raised go straight to the heart of the human fear of death and obsession with the afterlife. Will we, individually or collectively, ride off to glory, or will we drown in hellfire for all eternity? As those who best manipulate this dark vision learned, which side we fall on is often a matter of life or death. Honed into a weapon in the ongoing culture wars between states, religions, and citizenry, Revelation has significantly altered the course of history. Kirsch, whom the Washington Post calls “a fine storyteller with a flair for rendering ancient tales relevant and appealing to modern audiences,” delivers a far-ranging, entertaining, and shocking history of this scandalous book, which was nearly cut from the New Testament. From the fall of the Roman Empire to the Black Death, the Inquisition to the Protestant Reformation, the New World to the rise of the Religious Right, this chronicle of the use and abuse of the Book of Revelation tells the tale of the unfolding of history and the hopes, fears, dreams, and nightmares of all humanity

Showing that truth is stranger than fiction, Sylvain Neuvel’s A History of What Comes Next weaves a sci-fi thriller that blends a fast moving, darkly satirical look at 1930s rocketry with the amorality of progress, and the nature of violence. Always run, never fight. Preserve the knowledge. Survive at all cost. Take them to the stars. Over 99 identical generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices and sacrificing countless lives. Her turn comes at the dawn of the age of rocketry. Her mission: to lure Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, and secure the future of the space race. But Mia’s family is not the only group pushing the levers of history: an even more ruthless enemy lurks behind the scenes. A darkly satirical first contact thriller, as seen through the eyes of the women who make progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them… [Contains table.]

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2013 Synthesizing several decades of scholarship by historians East and West, Barbara Evans Clements traces the major developments in the history of women in Russia and their impact on the history of the nation. Sketching lived experiences across the centuries, she demonstrates the key roles that women played in shaping Russia's political, economic, social, and cultural development for over a millennium. The story Clements tells is one of hardship and endurance, but also one of achievement by women who, for example, promoted the conversion to Christianity, governed estates, created great art, rebelled against the government, established charities, built the tanks that rolled into Berlin in 1945, and flew the planes that strafed the retreating Wehrmacht. This daunting and complex history is presented in an engaging survey that integrates this scholarship into the field of Russian and post-Soviet history

The official prequel to the blockbuster videogame Resistance 3 America. July 1953. In this official prequel to Resistance 3, prospects are not looking up for planet Earth or Lieutenant Joseph Capelli. With the Chimera invasion in full swing, America has crumbled under the fierce alien juggernaut, its defenses overrun, millions dead, the rest left to fend for themselves. Many try to avoid the alien virus that turns humans into Chimeran killing machines. Capelli may be a pariah to the army for killing hero Nathan Hale, but he is still a patriot fighting to save the country and its citizens. However, some soldiers are ready to shoot him on sight—not to mention that Hale’s beautiful sister has every reason in the world to want him stone dead. But Capelli’s used to being in dangerous situations and taking crazy risks. And the next move he intends to make is pure suicide

From Michael Cunningham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours, comes this widely praised novel of two boyhood friends: Jonathan, lonely, introspective, and unsure of himself; and Bobby, hip, dark, and inarticulate. In New York after college, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his roommate, Clare, a veteran of the city's erotic wars. Bobby and Clare fall in love, scuttling the plans of Jonathan, who is gay, to father Clare's child. Then, when Clare and Bobby have a baby, the three move to a small house upstate to raise “their” child together and, with an odd friend, Alice, create a new kind of family. A Home at the End of the World masterfully depicts the charged, fragile relationships of urban life today. The film adaptation of A Home at the End of the World premiered in July 2004. Directed by Michael Mayer, with the screenplay by Michael Cunningham, the movie stars Sissy Spacek, Robin Wright Penn, Colin Farrell, and Dallas Roberts

The award-winning and internationally acclaimed author of the To the End of the Land now gives us a searing short novel about the life of a stand-up comic, as revealed in the course of one evening's performance. In the dance between comic and audience, with barbs flying back and forth, a deeper story begins to take shape — one that will alter the lives of many of those in attendance. In a little dive in a small Israeli city, Dov Greenstein, a comedian a bit past his prime, is doing a night of stand-up. In the audience is a district court justice, Avishai Lazar, whom Dov knew as a boy, along with a few others who remember Dov as an awkward, scrawny kid who walked on his hands to confound the neighborhood bullies. Gradually, as it teeters between hilarity and hysteria, Dov's patter becomes a kind of memoir, taking us back into the terrors of his childhood: we meet his beautiful flower of a mother, a Holocaust survivor in need of constant monitoring, and his punishing father, a striver who had little understanding of his creative son. Finally, recalling his week at a military camp for youth — where Lazar witnessed what would become the central event of Dov's childhood — Dov describes the indescribable while Lazar wrestles with his own part in the comedian's story of loss and survival. Continuing his investigations into how people confront life's capricious battering, and how art may blossom from it, Grossman delivers a stunning performance in this memorable one-night engagement (jokes in questionable taste included)

It’s a jacket; it’s a mattress; it’s a fortune! Mullaney staked his life on it. The way it all worked out was that Mullaney finally figured he had to take the big gamble; he’d never get rich selling encyclopedias. Consequently, he left his wife and went off to make a killing at cards, horses, dice — you name it. But here he is at the end of the year with a single subway token in his pocket and the hottest, sure-thing tip he’s ever heard on the second race at Aqueduct... So he’s standing at Fourteenth Street and Fourth Avenue wondering where he can promote some coin, who he can put the bite on, when this long black limousine pulls up and out hops a big guy with a beard and a gun and says, “Get in!” That’s how A Horse’s Head, Evan Hunter’s hugely funny new novel, starts. It never lets up as it races back and forth across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, diving into some very odd places indeed — such as the locked stacks of the Library’s Main Branch and an East Side cellar synagogue — and introducing some of the strangest gunsels, moon-struck kooks, and pliant lovelies in the entire metropolitan area. The laughs, the bodies, the girls come tumbling one on top of the other as Mullaney smooth-talks, wheedles and deals his way out of one dangerous situation into the next in his mad chase after the crummy, magical black jacket that doesn’t even fit him but which he’s sure is worth half a million dollars. Wild, wonderful, zany — A Horse’s Head is another surprise from the versatile author of The Paper Dragon, The Blackboard Jungle, and the 87th Precinct mysteries

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box and Malorie comes a haunting tale of love and horror, as the date of a lifetime becomes a maddening exploration of the depths of the heart

"A House Divided," the third volume of the trilogy that began with "The Good Earth" and "Sons," is a powerful portrayal of China in the midst of revolution. Wang Yuan is caught between the opposing ideas of different generations. After 6 years abroad, Yuan returns to China in the middle of a peasant uprising. His cousin is a captain in the revolutionary army, his sister has scandalized the family by her premarital pregnancy, and his warlord father continues to cling to his traditional ideals. It is through Yuan's efforts that a kind of peace is restored to the family

"Naipaul has constructed a marvelous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels for richness of comic insight and final, tragic power." – Newsweek – Review A gripping masterpiece, hailed as one of the 20th century's finest novels A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS is V.S. Naipaul's unforgettable third novel. Born the "wrong way" and thrust into a world that greeted him with little more than a bad omen, Mohun Biswas has spent his 46 years of life striving for independence. But his determined efforts have met only with calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, Mr Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. He marries into the domineering Tulsi family, on whom he becomes indignantly dependent, but rebels and takes on a succession of occupations in an arduous struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. Heartrending and darkly comic, A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS masterfully evokes a man's quest for autonomy against the backdrop of post-colonial Trinidad

A vivid, unforgettable story of an unlikely sisterhood — an emotionally powerful and haunting story of friendship that illuminates the plight of women in a traditional culture, from the author of the bestselling The Pearl That Broke Its Shell and When the Moon Is Low. For two decades, Zeba was a loving wife, a patient mother, and a peaceful villager. But her quiet life is shattered when her husband, Kamal, is found brutally murdered with a hatchet in the courtyard of their home. Nearly catatonic with shock, Zeba is unable to account for her whereabouts at the time of his death. Her children swear their mother could not have committed such a heinous act. Kamal’s family is sure she did, and demands justice. Barely escaping a vengeful mob, Zeba is arrested and jailed. Awaiting trial, she meets a group of women whose own misfortunes have led them to these bleak cells: eighteen-year-old Nafisa, imprisoned to protect her from an “honor killing”; twenty-five-year-old Latifa, a teen runaway who stays because it is safe shelter; twenty-year-old Mezghan, pregnant and unmarried, waiting for a court order to force her lover’s hand. Is Zeba a cold-blooded killer, these young women wonder, or has she been imprisoned, like them, for breaking some social rule? For these women, the prison is both a haven and a punishment; removed from the harsh and unforgiving world outside, they form a lively and indelible sisterhood. Into this closed world comes Yusuf, Zeba’s Afghan-born, American-raised lawyer whose commitment to human rights and desire to help his homeland have brought him back. With the fate this seemingly ordinary housewife in his hands, Yusuf discovers that, like the Afghanistan itself, his client may not be at all what he imagines. A moving look at the lives of modern Afghan women, The House with No Windows is astonishing, frightening, and triumphant

Of the many problems we face today, some are natural calamities and must be accepted and faced with equanimity. Others, however, are of our own making, created by misunderstanding, and can be corrected. One such type arises from the conflict of ideologies, political or religious, when people fight each other for petty ends, losing sight of the basic humanity that binds us all together as a single human family. We must remember that the different religions, ideologies, and political systems of the world are meant for human beings to achieve happiness. We must not lose sight of this fundamental goal and at no time should we place means above ends; the supremacy of humanity over matter and ideology must always be maintained

As an Angel, Remy possesses powers and skills only to be used if the situation calls for it. And the sudden reappearance of the Garden of Eden is just such a situation. Two opposing forces of immortals want the Key to the Gates of Eden, so Remy must turn for help to a fallen angel who is sometimes friend, sometimes foe—and always deadly

Acclaimed author Kresley Cole introduces a sizzling new series with this tale of a fierce werewolf and a bewitching vampire -- unlikely soul mates whose passion will test the boundaries of life and death. A mythic warrior who'll stop at nothing to possess her . . . After enduring years of torture from the vampire horde, Lachlain MacRieve, leader of the Lykae Clan, is enraged to find the predestined mate he's waited millennia for is a vampire. Or partly one. This Emmaline is a small, ethereal half Valkyrie/half vampire, who somehow begins to soothe the fury burning within him. A vampire captured by her wildest fantasy . . . Sheltered Emmaline Troy finally sets out to uncover the truth about her deceased parents -- until a powerful Lykae claims her as his mate and forces her back to his ancestral Scottish castle. There, her fear of the Lykae -- and their notorious dark desires -- ebbs as he begins a slow, wicked seduction to sate her own dark cravings. An all-consuming desire . . . Yet when an ancient evil from her past resurfaces, will their desire deepen into a love that can bring a proud warrior to his knees and turn a gentle beauty into the fighter she was born to be?